Absolutel!y! I see students every day imitating what they see in the movies & video games.

The vast majority of people, no. However, there are a small percentage of people who are highly impressionable or have difficulty seperating fiction from reality. In these cases, their actions may be negatively affected by what they see on TV. This is by no means unique to television or video games though. Among this small group, they would receive the same affects through reading violent books or hearing violent stories from friends. Beyond this there is the thing that makes the biggest impression on people. That would be defenses from second rate lawyers blaming mass media for crimes they commited. This is quite similar to in the '90s violent crime being attributed to rap music. However, there is little to no actual coorolation supporting this. It's a poor defense that's meaning is to inspire distress among others by using their own dislike for the scapegoat to get their vote. This could be shown to the last election in the US, where a huge ordeal was made out of gay marriage to distract voters from the real issue. By condeming gay marriage, the Bush administration distracted conservative voters from the real issue by using their own dislike for gay marriage as a political ploy. The same affect is used in these controversies. Parents tend not to like their children watching violent movies or playing violent games. As they are already unfavorable to this media, when you blame this media they will automatically be prejudiced against it. Of course, the key factor here is that there is a small (And I do mean small and would most likely qualify as mentally unstable with or without the prescence of violent media) that it is absolutely true for.

In my opinion, what encourages violence aren't properly violent fictions (I agree with Mytch); the real problem is how natural and common is violence nowadays – we find violent characters and situations everywhere and we're accustomed to think it's normal. But well, it isn't normal at all, there should be no violence!

Well it depends, of course that exposition to crude violence have always an efect in you psykis but, we are rational people, so is a cheap excuse to blame the media for the criminal acts, specially since nobody is forced to watch things that may result shocking for himself, many people like to blame someone else for their lack if common sence! However, younger people and kids should be protected by their parents from wacthing this kind of things before they're capable to make distintions between reality and fiction!

I think younger people might be more easlier affected by the violent scenes, especially when movie makers make the mafia gang members look really like heroes. Kids and young adolescent might follow suit. But with proper education about the bad effects on gangster lives, they should be alerted.